I'm trying to think of an accurate description of what I feel this movie needed, but the only thing I can safely come up with is "police intervention." When a socially awkward member of hotel management approaches you with alcohol, pushes his way into your room and asks to touch your butt, usually that warrants some sort of phone call to the authorities or at least to other members of hotel management saying "ya know, I think tonight's room is on you this time," but apparently if you're a traveling art seller, this is just the kind of request you are hoping to grant. Obviously, I'm in the wrong profession as it works for Mike (Steve Zahn) in Management, who is an overly lonely, horny, desperate 12 year old trapped in a grown man's body who asks to touch the behind of Sue (Jennifer Aniston), who foolishly says "sure, if you leave me alone" which causes Mike to fall madly in love with her and tail her tail across the county lookin' for more of that sweet, sweet can-dy.
OK, fine, let's get away from the bullshit premise for a sec, which instantly had me set at a 6 as soon as I saw the trailer and I admit I was expecting a cameo by Jason Biggs (will hate him 'til the day I die) and I was "sadly" disappointed. But here's the interesting thing about this movie that threw me for a bit of a loop; that was mostly it as far as the uncomfortably hokey crap. You see a plot based around a proposal to touch someone's ass, you expect horrible sex joke after sex joke to plague the rest of the movie like a National Lampoon fuck-a-thon, but this story stayed so incredibly down to the earth that by the end of it I was applauding its exceptional discipline.
Not to say it didn't have cheesy moments, but they were sweet cheesy…like John Cusack in any 1980's romantic comedy he ever did ever cheesy and for it, Steve Zahn's Mike actually becomes a rather fun character to watch and you both sympathize with him and greatly appreciate his growth and development. I was very pleasantly surprised at how much Management prevented what seemed certain to be another enjoyably slanderous review (bastards). Miraculously, this is one of the most charming romantic comedies to come out of The BackLOG so far; the conflicts never seemed so far out there that it wasn't plausible and the methods that both Mike and Sue dealt with them wasn't so overdone that it just got stupid like other rom-coms from the last three months (see Practically All Of Them).
However, whereas I appreciated WHAT it did with its story and its characters, I wasn't entirely appreciative of WHY it did them. I struggle to see the reasons you have to touch Rachel Aniston's…errr…Jennifer Aniston's (I always do that, don't know why) ass to get this whole thing going or why her ex Jongo has to be such a weirdo character that seems like he was only thrown in because the movie didn't have enough humor in it at times. The more I watched it, the more is seemed like it was trying to dig these little holes so it could jump out of them, arms raised in a triumph, head held high to show that it's capable of overcoming challenging odds which is about as tactless as ramming into a girl's car so you can get her phone number along with her insurance information and call her randomly to show off how much money you make by paying for her repairs in hopes that she'll ignore your bastard move and say "ooooh, a man with money, now it's my turn to hit that!"
For surprisingly turning itself around as well as exceptional performance by Steve Zahn, who had one of the most noticeable changes of character I have seen in a LONG time, as well as Jennifer Aniston, who also played her role well, I'm giving Management a refreshing 8 dustbusters out of 10. I had a lot of fun with this, a few problems, but ya know what, it was a rom-com I could really get into with a lot of depth, a great story, awesome chemistry, and hey! It didn't break my romantic movie rule either. Well done guys, well done.
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